


Burn

by orphan_account



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Marijuana, Newt has a quiet moment of realization amidst the noise, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a kind of "in-between" moment during the events of the movie. Before shit went down, but after they've arrived at the Hong Kong Shatterdome. Newt finds solace in his loneliness, but Hermann brings something else to the table that changes Newt's mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking a lot about how fans interpret Hermann as smoking cigarettes, and it's been my own personal headcanon for a while that Newt smokes weed on occasion both for recreation and to help calm his anxiety. So basically a bit of a self-indulgent ficlet where we look at that. Might expand on this idea later when I'm not supposed to be doing like a million other things.

Newt shuts his eyes as he inhales, deep and purposeful, from the bowl, all the way down into his lungs as he saviors the invigorating burn. He holds it in for a moment of punctuated peacefulness before letting the ghostly tendrils of smoke curl out from between his lips, opening his eyes to watch as it dissipates into the night sky. A war-weary part of Newt wishes he could do the same.

Facing mortality was really never his strong suit, and with frenzied cries that the end of the world was coming at the human race fast like a train had shaken Newt. It’s in between the screams and kaju viscera that Newt lets himself sink into the lulls of humanity. He slinks around the nuclear power plant turned base, wandering aimlessly around the corridors and empty hallways as the weight of his work weighs on his mind; pecking, nibbling, gnawing at the wiring and strings that keep Newton Geiszler pieced together.

He savors the high, but there’s still something chilling about the way the lights from Hong Kong stamp out the starry sky, leaving nothing but a darkened void of nonexistence and nothingness and fuck shit fuck he feels his pulse quicken in fear and bile rises in the back of his throat. Newt starts to take a calming breath, anything to stave off the panic washing over him like a wave, but a familiar tap-tap-clack catches his attention. Newt turns around as best he can on the rusted staircase, watching curiously as Hermann makes his way down.

He settles onto the step just above Newt so that he’s behind his colleague, as if keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t succumb to the insanity and jump off the defunct fire escape and into the polluted waters below. Newt scoffs internally. He’s not that impulsive. Maybe. He thinks.

“Really, Newton?” Hermann asks condescendingly, eyeing the bowl in Newt’s hand.

“Go away, Hermann.” Newt says with no real conviction, and, precisely as expected, the other man does the exact opposite (because that’s just who they are to each other, aren’t they? Diametric opposites, reverse polar charges always butting heads yet somehow avoiding the larger issues at hand), and shifts closer, close enough where Newt can feel a warm, steady breath on the back of his clammy neck. Newt suppresses a shiver.

“You just can’t let a man enjoy the end of the world in peace, can you?”

“The end of the world?” and Newt can feel the eyebrow raise. “You’re throwing in the towel a little too early, Geiszler.”

Newt stares down into the bowl, examining the cold little clumps. “What makes you so certain of that?”

“My numbers,” Hermann says flatly, resolutely. No wiggle room, no place for argument. So, of course, that means Newt tries to start one anyways as he scoffs derisively.

“You mean theories,” Newt replies obnoxiously, but Hermann doesn’t rise to the bait. Not this time. He always knows when not to, and that just pisses Newt off even more. The pair just sit there in pregnant silence as Newt squirms in his seat, waiting for something, anything to break the silence. So he offers up the bowl to Hermann. “Wanna hit?” 

Hermann looks blankly at it, face empty (which, to Newt, means plain as day that he’s quickly calculating the merits and downfalls of the situation).

Wordlessly, Hermann takes it from Newt’s hand and opens his other palm expectantly as he simply replies, “Lighter,” bringing the bowl to his lips. The flame of the lighter flickers to life, and Newt let’s out a quiet “Oh,” of realization under his breath as Hermann lights the weed, breathing in without missing a beat. He lets it sit in his lungs before exhaling, expelling the smoke through his mouth and nose as Newt watches in rapt curiosity. He’d seen Hermann smoke before- cigarettes, pipes- but there was something uniquely fulfilling in watching his colleague indulge in something more typically… Newt-esque. It feels balanced, in a way. Quickly he hands it back to Newt, saying something about how there’s another hit left on it.

Newt scrambles to bring the bowl up to his lips, but his eyes linger briefly on the piercing orange clumps; vibrant, renewed, glowing in the all-consuming darkness of the night. He inhales from the shared bowl, cherishing the sweet hit of smoke and the imagined taste of Hermann’s lips still hot on the mouthpiece. He lowers it, blowing out into the air.

He waits a moment before, “So, certain world-wide destruction?”

“Numbers, Newton, numbers.”

Newt just snorts softly, offering his bowl up to Hermann again so he can relight it, make the embers burn for Newt, keep the settling darkness away- at least for a little bit longer.


End file.
